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Sorry about it not being pre-rain, havent got a good version of that yet Will probably be released soon. Readjusted some of the PostFx settings, HDR and SSAO, yesterday and also did some minor lighting changes on Hirochi; brightness down to 1.5, Ambient scale alittle less saturated and so on.

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Sorry about it not being pre-rain, havent got a good version of that yet Will probably be released soon. Readjusted some of the PostFx settings, HDR and SSAO, yesterday and also did some minor lighting changes on Hirochi; brightness down to 1.5, Ambient scale alittle less saturated and so on.

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As long as it's more realistic feels than vanilla, that will do, thanks

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Ok, so going away on vacation for a few days so instead of finishing this later and then releasing it i might aswell ship out the files as beta, as they are right now, same as i use atm. No screenshots since i should already be in bed.

It contains the same stuff as the latest beta from page 7 in this thread but the settings for the ECUSA map are updated (less cozy feeling, more realistic?), PostFx is updated (SSAO is WIP) and ive added my Hirochi map settings (very WIP). Do this:

2. Clear cache by deleting the cache folder(s) found in your 'This PC\Documents\Beamng.drive' folder OR use Clear Cache in the game loader

3. Start BeamNG

4. Open your PostFx window (the button at the bottom of the Graphics settings, in Options) and load the preset which is in the 'This PC\Documents\Beamng.drive' folder, the preset is named betatest2.postfxpreset

thats nice. which download is that, if not, do you think you will update it? im considering getting reshade again..

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Its not out yet, its my latest WIP but will be released kinda soon. Reshade is goodness and gives access to some of the latest stuff gfx wise. Used to use it alot but i want to contribute to BeamNG and when i can get a good enough result using the ingame stuff i do that.

I believe that if the devs would spend more time (they might do alot behind the scenes, i might not know of) on the gfx apartment that theres a ton of users that would give BeamNG the attention it deserves, if it looked more modern. The things ive done makes IMO alot of difference and didnt take long to sort.

PostFx was broken in a few ways; PostFx window settings not reacting, Tonemapping not working at all, Bloom had a weird offset and had oversensitive settings, minimum luminance not working, white cutoff not working. That is now fixed with my mods, except SSAOs low/medium/high quality settings which in my unreleased version is hardcoded to using same resolution as the screen, instead of stuck at half the scale which leads to better performance of course but gives really bad artifacts and cluttering, causing the SSAO to look like weird chunky clouds.
Now this might be one of those "we are making a huge update to this later on so we'll not spend resources on it now" which they have hinted about every now and then the past years but until then they could atleast include the fixed PostFx.

On top of that the sky, clouds and lighting on the vanilla maps are not to my liking (this might be a very individual preference thing) and gives a more flat look than what it actually can. The latest updates to the vanilla maps content however is awesome, way more alive maps now and boosts the looks when tinkering with the settings for them.

Also user Nekkit is using a metallic shader that already exists in Beamng , for the Nurburgring car pack and it makes a huge difference once again to the look of the cars, no more flat gloss coloured cars.

2. Clear cache by deleting the cache folder(s) found in your 'This PC\Documents\Beamng.drive' folder OR use Clear Cache in the game loader

3. Start BeamNG

4. Open your PostFx window (the button at the bottom of the Graphics settings, in Options, if its not there you need to enable Advanced Functions) and load the preset which is in the 'This PC\Documents\Beamng.drive' folder, the preset is named AL.postfxpreset

And that should do it!

Id appreciate if ppl could post screenshots, comments on what to improve, if you like it and so on. Not required but would be nice to get some feedback

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Been suspecting DOF giving different results on different maps due to what value visible distance is set to for each map. Remembered to test it out today and its a yes. If visible distance is set to the same value on different maps, it will give the same result

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@Brother_Dave nice graphics man. I think my RX 480 might explode if I try this, but I'll have to give it a try anyways. This might really make my city look GOOD.

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Thanks alot @bob.blunderton Yeah i had a rx480 and it did run some of my early Reshade mods fairly good, but i swapped that out to a 1050 before i started working on the ingame stuff so i dont know. That rx card did cause some weird stuff on my comp, crashing it when hitting load spikes and so on. I dont have a high spec computer; z77-d3a mb, i52500k (not sure how it even can run as good as it does), 8gb ram, SSD disk, and that 1050 OC gfx card. Gives me a locked FPS at 30 on most maps except WCUSA which has always killed my computer no matter what.

Your city looks good as it is, due to all that content and the layout of city, but who knows might look even better! I have actually tried changing the sky settings for one of the older version. Id say about 50% of it is the settings for the maps themselves, scatter sky settings to be specific. I use about the same settings for all maps, atleast Sky Brightness (25), Brightness (1.15) and Exposure (1.6-3).

A fair warning, the last release uses full resolution SSAO (would be the High quality setting in the PostFx window, havent made the quality selection working yet) because it makes and overall hell of a difference BUT it kills FPS if on a slower system. Might start releasing different versions based on SSAO quality, due to its impact.

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Thanks alot @bob.blunderton Yeah i had a rx480 and it did run some of my early Reshade mods fairly good, but i swapped that out to a 1050 before i started working on the ingame stuff so i dont know. That rx card did cause some weird stuff on my comp, crashing it when hitting load spikes and so on. I dont have a high spec computer; z77-d3a mb, i52500k (not sure how it even can run as good as it does), 8gb ram, SSD disk, and that 1050 OC gfx card. Gives me a locked FPS at 30 on most maps except WCUSA which has always killed my computer no matter what.

Your city looks good as it is, due to all that content and the layout of city, but who knows might look even better! I have actually tried changing the sky settings for one of the older version. Id say about 50% of it is the settings for the maps themselves, scatter sky settings to be specific. I use about the same settings for all maps, atleast Sky Brightness (25), Brightness (1.15) and Exposure (1.6-3).

A fair warning, the last release uses full resolution SSAO (would be the High quality setting in the PostFx window, havent made the quality selection working yet) because it makes and overall hell of a difference BUT it kills FPS if on a slower system. Might start releasing different versions based on SSAO quality, due to its impact.

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I'd reckon you re-install that RX card in your (or any) PC, install MSI afterburner, and knocking 30~40mhz off the core clock (turn it down a bit), and see if that fixes it. It fixed it for me.
I was getting constant but somewhat inconsistent hitches normally leading to crashes of the display driver, which made me think the card was bad. Installing MSI afterburner made me notice that somehow in Windows 10, the driver + BeamNG was causing the card to boost about 20mhz or so over it's max 1288 core clock. Putting it at 1250 solved the issue 100% of the time. I can now run the game all night and it only freezes if it's left minimized when I go to bed, and the display times out after almost an hour - never while playing.

West Coast kills your PC because of DRAW CALLS. It's the CPU speed there, in a nut-shell. When I open up a lot of BeamNG models, I notice that a lot of UV's on some of the models could be connected, and aren't. In my city, I even used 'hidden' faces within buildings to connect sections of like-materials together to keep draw calls down. One draw call that has 1000 surfaces within it, is better than 10 draw calls with 10~50 surfaces any day of the week. 4000 draw calls = <60fps on a intel 2xxx series. 5000 draw calls = <60fps on intel 4xxx series. Clock speed has a large effect on it, provided you keep the processor cool enough to maintain the speed / boosting (your CPU is soldered, and an i5, hence should have little to no issue).
Draw Calls = CPU reads a model, and calls each connected set of textured faces (called UV's) on said model (and all identical models with the SAME phase of detail level displayed), and tells the GPU to render X amount of connected faces with a single diffuse texture, normal texture, specular, or reflection/cube mapping (if a texture has all of those, that set of connected faces could be as many as FOUR draw calls in and of itself). Diffuse = what it looks like - brick, concrete, a picture of a lawn, etc. Normal is a 3d 'height map' of the texture, like bump-mapping for sake of argument. Specular is how light bounces off of it, like seeing the tire wear bands on a road and how it shines more than the edges. Reflectivity / Cube Mapping is mirror-like reflections of the skybox and whatever else the map and/or game engine is telling it to show - like you're vehicle or some other trees and buildings - reflecting a whole world scene just about doubles the draw calls and is a BIG hit to FPS. Also, Shadows are done after the scene is mostly all populated and drawn, so that adds EVEN MORE draw calls to the scene, and you guessed it - slows things down more when the processor is already saturated. So, a fast CPU helps a lot more than most people think when it comes to displaying a fancy scene, as with Direct X 11 and below (anything but 12) do draw calls with only a SINGLE CORE. When that core hits 100%, the entire process of rendering the scene has to wait until all draw calls are served and fulfilled. Direct X 12 and Vulkan allow game developers to use MULTIPLE CORES to handle draw calls, which is frankly one of the best reasons for either even existing. This is also what allows some of the newest games to have such a detailed scenes such as the new Metro Exodus (I believe that's it, it just came out and is exclusive to Epic store right now), plus Ray Tracing stuff (I couldn't be bothered to spend 1000$ to have a GPU that will render fancy puddles, sheesh!). Generally speaking, when designing graphics, models, or scenes in a modern video game, you're quite likely to hit the draw call limits of the Direct X 11 API's single-threaded nature exponentially faster than you'd hit the triangle-fill-rate limit of even a modest, main-stream RX 470 GPU. Video card upgrades almost always do NOT help with the draw call issue nor improve the FPS in busy scenes, but processor upgrades DO. My 4790k was actually bottlenecking my lowly RX 480 8gb card, which I never knew to what extent it did - but oh yes it did.

Maybe it's time to upgrade as I finally have somehow managed to throw together a new machine after fixing my nephew's crashed car...
Getting a Ryzen when it's in the budget will amaze. Someone I know just upgraded from a 7700k, and got a B450 board (+ bios update) and a Ryzen 3800x (almost identical to my 3700x), and is amazed. Even the slower parts of the town where FPS drops won't be helped too much by a better GPU, if you're limited on the CPU (one cpu core is maxed, wait for gpu on FPS is <1)
Now, granted, turning off shadows and dynamic reflections can help, but - alas - you're working on improving the graphics. That'd defeat the entire point.
That being said, I wouldn't rule out waiting some time for upgrading, then again, the new Ryzen 3700x upgrade I did last month from a 4790k @ 4.4ghz & it's 32gb of 2400mhz CL-11 memory running dual channel was amazing... so you will be FLOORED. Whether you go for a cheap B450/B350 or Z370/Z470 just make sure you get a board that has the BIOS updated (Ryzen 3000 series ready sticker on the box), or that it has 'BIOS Flashback feature' for flashing without the cpu on the board, otherwise an older board plus Ryzen 3xxx won't boot up*. I got an x570 board (cheapest one I could get) to avoid all that BIOS hassle though. If you do get one, avoid the MSI X570 'MPG' labeled board as it's got the worst VRM's out of the lot. Worry not about the people who say 'it doesn't boost well enough' etc, that's "fahl-dee-rahl", I have 0 boosting issues here too... because I scraped off most all the thermal paste as stock cooler came with WAY too much. Too little is WAY better than even a hair too much, let alone 2~5x what you really need, hence why ppl have boosting issues on Ryzen (not smart enough to scrape some of that thermal material off the bottom of the heat-sink).

The time to upgrade from 2xxx~6xxx intel series is NOW (well whenever you can afford it, took me 5 years to set the money aside!). Ebay has LOTS of used stuff, maybe a 2xxx series would be more in your budget, though not as good at BeamNG physics. Consider your options if it's cheap enough. Skip the 1xxx series though, they couldn't even hit 4ghz with those.
Why Ryzen? PCI-Express 4.0 on x570 chipset, much cheaper than intel (more traffic for less $), soldered heat-spreader (part that faces the heatsink) & easier to cool, comes with an EASY MOUNTING very capable stock cooler (especially 8-core or higher models, recommended), possibility of upgrading to a 16-core Ryzen 3950x processor (ships September 30th) or the possibility of 4xxx series processor next year in 2020 (not promised, but may be still on AM4), and it overclocks automatically so you don't have to. It's a computer, make it do the thinking/work for you, work smarter not harder. Also, now I don't SWEAT when I edit maps for hours, even with the AC on like with my 4790k chip, even though this has TWICE the cores.
*AMD will send you a boot kit free to get your BIOS updated, but that'll take a few days.
I hope some of this book helped.

Sorry to infest the thread with my loooooooooong post, however, should you find my scripture here even remotely as helpful as I find these graphics in your thread beautiful, then I have done my duty.

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I'd reckon you re-install that RX card in your (or any) PC, install MSI afterburner, and knocking 30~40mhz off the core clock (turn it down a bit), and see if that fixes it. It fixed it for me.
I was getting constant but somewhat inconsistent hitches normally leading to crashes of the display driver, which made me think the card was bad. Installing MSI afterburner made me notice that somehow in Windows 10, the driver + BeamNG was causing the card to boost about 20mhz or so over it's max 1288 core clock. Putting it at 1250 solved the issue 100% of the time. I can now run the game all night and it only freezes if it's left minimized when I go to bed, and the display times out after almost an hour - never while playing.

West Coast kills your PC because of DRAW CALLS. It's the CPU speed there, in a nut-shell. When I open up a lot of BeamNG models, I notice that a lot of UV's on some of the models could be connected, and aren't. In my city, I even used 'hidden' faces within buildings to connect sections of like-materials together to keep draw calls down. One draw call that has 1000 surfaces within it, is better than 10 draw calls with 10~50 surfaces any day of the week. 4000 draw calls = <60fps on a intel 2xxx series. 5000 draw calls = <60fps on intel 4xxx series. Clock speed has a large effect on it, provided you keep the processor cool enough to maintain the speed / boosting (your CPU is soldered, and an i5, hence should have little to no issue).
Draw Calls = CPU reads a model, and calls each connected set of textured faces (called UV's) on said model (and all identical models with the SAME phase of detail level displayed), and tells the GPU to render X amount of connected faces with a single diffuse texture, normal texture, specular, or reflection/cube mapping (if a texture has all of those, that set of connected faces could be as many as FOUR draw calls in and of itself). Diffuse = what it looks like - brick, concrete, a picture of a lawn, etc. Normal is a 3d 'height map' of the texture, like bump-mapping for sake of argument. Specular is how light bounces off of it, like seeing the tire wear bands on a road and how it shines more than the edges. Reflectivity / Cube Mapping is mirror-like reflections of the skybox and whatever else the map and/or game engine is telling it to show - like you're vehicle or some other trees and buildings - reflecting a whole world scene just about doubles the draw calls and is a BIG hit to FPS. Also, Shadows are done after the scene is mostly all populated and drawn, so that adds EVEN MORE draw calls to the scene, and you guessed it - slows things down more when the processor is already saturated. So, a fast CPU helps a lot more than most people think when it comes to displaying a fancy scene, as with Direct X 11 and below (anything but 12) do draw calls with only a SINGLE CORE. When that core hits 100%, the entire process of rendering the scene has to wait until all draw calls are served and fulfilled. Direct X 12 and Vulkan allow game developers to use MULTIPLE CORES to handle draw calls, which is frankly one of the best reasons for either even existing. This is also what allows some of the newest games to have such a detailed scenes such as the new Metro Exodus (I believe that's it, it just came out and is exclusive to Epic store right now), plus Ray Tracing stuff (I couldn't be bothered to spend 1000$ to have a GPU that will render fancy puddles, sheesh!). Generally speaking, when designing graphics, models, or scenes in a modern video game, you're quite likely to hit the draw call limits of the Direct X 11 API's single-threaded nature exponentially faster than you'd hit the triangle-fill-rate limit of even a modest, main-stream RX 470 GPU. Video card upgrades almost always do NOT help with the draw call issue nor improve the FPS in busy scenes, but processor upgrades DO. My 4790k was actually bottlenecking my lowly RX 480 8gb card, which I never knew to what extent it did - but oh yes it did.

Maybe it's time to upgrade as I finally have somehow managed to throw together a new machine after fixing my nephew's crashed car...
Getting a Ryzen when it's in the budget will amaze. Someone I know just upgraded from a 7700k, and got a B450 board (+ bios update) and a Ryzen 3800x (almost identical to my 3700x), and is amazed. Even the slower parts of the town where FPS drops won't be helped too much by a better GPU, if you're limited on the CPU (one cpu core is maxed, wait for gpu on FPS is <1)
Now, granted, turning off shadows and dynamic reflections can help, but - alas - you're working on improving the graphics. That'd defeat the entire point.
That being said, I wouldn't rule out waiting some time for upgrading, then again, the new Ryzen 3700x upgrade I did last month from a 4790k @ 4.4ghz & it's 32gb of 2400mhz CL-11 memory running dual channel was amazing... so you will be FLOORED. Whether you go for a cheap B450/B350 or Z370/Z470 just make sure you get a board that has the BIOS updated (Ryzen 3000 series ready sticker on the box), or that it has 'BIOS Flashback feature' for flashing without the cpu on the board, otherwise an older board plus Ryzen 3xxx won't boot up*. I got an x570 board (cheapest one I could get) to avoid all that BIOS hassle though. If you do get one, avoid the MSI X570 'MPG' labeled board as it's got the worst VRM's out of the lot. Worry not about the people who say 'it doesn't boost well enough' etc, that's "fahl-dee-rahl", I have 0 boosting issues here too... because I scraped off most all the thermal paste as stock cooler came with WAY too much. Too little is WAY better than even a hair too much, let alone 2~5x what you really need, hence why ppl have boosting issues on Ryzen (not smart enough to scrape some of that thermal material off the bottom of the heat-sink).

The time to upgrade from 2xxx~6xxx intel series is NOW (well whenever you can afford it, took me 5 years to set the money aside!). Ebay has LOTS of used stuff, maybe a 2xxx series would be more in your budget, though not as good at BeamNG physics. Consider your options if it's cheap enough. Skip the 1xxx series though, they couldn't even hit 4ghz with those.
Why Ryzen? PCI-Express 4.0 on x570 chipset, much cheaper than intel (more traffic for less $), soldered heat-spreader (part that faces the heatsink) & easier to cool, comes with an EASY MOUNTING very capable stock cooler (especially 8-core or higher models, recommended), possibility of upgrading to a 16-core Ryzen 3950x processor (ships September 30th) or the possibility of 4xxx series processor next year in 2020 (not promised, but may be still on AM4), and it overclocks automatically so you don't have to. It's a computer, make it do the thinking/work for you, work smarter not harder. Also, now I don't SWEAT when I edit maps for hours, even with the AC on like with my 4790k chip, even though this has TWICE the cores.
*AMD will send you a boot kit free to get your BIOS updated, but that'll take a few days.
I hope some of this book helped.

Sorry to infest the thread with my loooooooooong post, however, should you find my scripture here even remotely as helpful as I find these graphics in your thread beautiful, then I have done my duty.

--Cheers and keep up the great work!

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Thanks and infest away, its all an intresting read and especially the cooling paste part, didnt know manufacturers were so reckless even though i usually build my own computer and has seen a few pastidents.. I didnt have such an in depth understanding of draw calls but it all makes sense the way you explain it. Tried to keep away from hidden faces when i made those models for you but sounds like some were maybe good to leave in there.

I have been eyeballing Ryzen 3700x-3950x for an upgrade so its really good to get some of your feedback. Looking at hardware upgrade kits with mb, cpu and ram (16-32gb) and have been close to buying it several times BUT i have other things to prioritize IRL atm. Got my project car right about done and prepping for paint, need to have that done if anything would require me to sell it to free up some cash. 4 hunting dogs/dear family members which all req attention, training and licenses, also need to weld a new 4-dog box for our dog hauler.. Bills apparently never stop coming and the other cars need work every once in a while.
BUT i have two materialistic things that keep me afloat, it is my project car and BeamNG. BeamNG literally helped me cool off my brain under the most hectic time during the first year of our daughter. It lets me disconnect for a while, whether im making gfx changes or just cruising around and i want to contribute any way i can. Couldnt go out to the shed and work on the car cause i wouldnt hear her due to the noise i usually make.

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Thanks and infest away, its all an intresting read and especially the cooling paste part, didnt know manufacturers were so reckless even though i usually build my own computer and has seen a few pastidents.. I didnt have such an in depth understanding of draw calls but it all makes sense the way you explain it. Tried to keep away from hidden faces when i made those models for you but sounds like some were maybe good to leave in there.

I have been eyeballing Ryzen 3700x-3950x for an upgrade but REAL LIFE occurs - drat!
BUT i have two materialistic things that keep me afloat, it is my project car and BeamNG. Who would have ever thought smashing cars up is stress relieving? Couldn't go out to the shed and work on the car cause i wouldnt hear her due to the noise i usually make.

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You act like not hearing the kid is a BAD THING??? That's the whole reason men turn garages into man-caves anyway! The Misses really has pulled one over on you, "lookout, you've been snookered"!
*bonks you on the head and ask if you're OK* *associated bird sounds with stars going around*
It's all good brother, it's all good. When you have the time, and you're not pushing yourself or your budget overboard, grab a Ryzen 3700x 8-core as I and many have done, or if you want to go ludicrous processing power (though I'd spring for fancier graphics before this next one) grab a 3900x 12-core. 16GB is 'good enough' while 32GB is good for content creation or just 'filling only 2 slots using 2x 16gb sticks to save room for future upgrades' type of thing.
Keep in mind by the time you save up some cash, intel is releasing 10th generation parts early next year, I'd imagine sometime before March~May time-frame, or during, at-worst-case. So whatever you get may end up being on sale by then or have other post-Chris's-Mess promotions going on.
I wish you the best on your poor neglected project car, I know how that feels. I bought a replacement fender and grill for my 'Rolla (Corolla), spent HOURS getting the paint perfect on it, and my sister's almost-50-year-old idiot boyfriend just painted over my nice dark-blue fender with silver paint while painting something else. I wanted to knock his block off, but didn't. At-least you don't have other idiots contesting for space that shouldn't be in there in the first place, ruining your hard work.
So long story short, I wish you the best on all that. Don't worry about the models you made before, I will surely get them in at some point and they're just dandy the way they are. I will neaten them up if I must or make any other changes, but they are very nice as-is.
Just don't forget about soundproof interior doors Sleep is a good thing. You may inadvertently envy deaf people by the time your child is 10.

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You act like not hearing the kid is a BAD THING??? That's the whole reason men turn garages into man-caves anyway! The Misses really has pulled one over on you, "lookout, you've been snookered"!
*bonks you on the head and ask if you're OK* *associated bird sounds with stars going around*
It's all good brother, it's all good. When you have the time, and you're not pushing yourself or your budget overboard, grab a Ryzen 3700x 8-core as I and many have done, or if you want to go ludicrous processing power (though I'd spring for fancier graphics before this next one) grab a 3900x 12-core. 16GB is 'good enough' while 32GB is good for content creation or just 'filling only 2 slots using 2x 16gb sticks to save room for future upgrades' type of thing.
Keep in mind by the time you save up some cash, intel is releasing 10th generation parts early next year, I'd imagine sometime before March~May time-frame, or during, at-worst-case. So whatever you get may end up being on sale by then or have other post-Chris's-Mess promotions going on.
I wish you the best on your poor neglected project car, I know how that feels. I bought a replacement fender and grill for my 'Rolla (Corolla), spent HOURS getting the paint perfect on it, and my sister's almost-50-year-old idiot boyfriend just painted over my nice dark-blue fender with silver paint while painting something else. I wanted to knock his block off, but didn't. At-least you don't have other idiots contesting for space that shouldn't be in there in the first place, ruining your hard work.
So long story short, I wish you the best on all that. Don't worry about the models you made before, I will surely get them in at some point and they're just dandy the way they are. I will neaten them up if I must or make any other changes, but they are very nice as-is.
Just don't forget about soundproof interior doors Sleep is a good thing. You may inadvertently envy deaf people by the time your child is 10.

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lol nah, cant wait to come home after work and hang around with her but i do need to work on a few materialistic things And dont worry about the car, its in no way neglected, it gets the same percent of my free time spent on it, its just that the free time is now down to a few hours a week..

Havent kept up with Intel lately so didnt know they might release the new generation that soon. I do prefer Intel over AMD due to fewer bad experiences with Intel.

Looking forward to seeing those models ingame but no rush, keep working on it at a healthy pace, its meant to give energy, not take